AUTOMATION AND RAPID ADOPTION OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE FIELD OF CONSULTING, AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR THE HUMAN WORKFORCE.



Desilva, Dulshan
(2021) AUTOMATION AND RAPID ADOPTION OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN THE FIELD OF CONSULTING, AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR THE HUMAN WORKFORCE. Doctor of Business Administration thesis, University of Liverpool.

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Abstract

This doctoral thesis investigates an issue faced by the IT consultants and associates of Princeton Pragmatics, a small IT consulting services start-up in New Jersey, USA. Since the summer of 2017, the companies in the USA relying on IT solutions, particularly in sectors such as financial services, experienced a rapidly emerging trend adopting Artificial Intelligence (AI) and modern forms of automation. As a result, the IT professionals’ typical work is gradually becoming automated, threatening the demand for the IT consultants’ current skills. Hence, this research examines “what strategies could Princeton Pragmatics and its IT consultant partners pursue in response to emerging trends in the adoption of automation and AI technologies?” as its overarching research question. The unit of analysis of this research is the IT consultant, the typical kind of associate who works with Princeton Pragmatics to cater to their clients. Hence the research was conducted as collaborative action research, which involved the primary researcher being an insider participant. The action research consisted of four research cycles leading to activities done within the collaborative action research group formed among six Princeton Pragmatics associates. The action research group’s input was supplemented by seventeen recorded interviews with a different group of participants. By doing qualitative analysis on the data and using scholarly literature as a third voice, the researcher makes multiple findings related to the research problem. Through this analysis, the researcher discovers that experienced IT professionals can become vulnerable to three vicious cycles that can prevent them from remaining marketable. The analysis further revealed that it is necessary to employ attitude changes among IT professionals to avoid getting entangled in these vicious cycles. This research delivers an actionable model consisting of three heuristic devices used as a decision support tool by the IT consultants in this situation. Since not much research available on this topic currently, this study has many implications for IT practitioners. Also, quite notably, this is one of those action research conducted during the COVID-19 global pandemic. Due to the techniques used during the data collection, the research activities were not that much disrupted. Hence, this study has several axiological values to the scholarly community interested in action research.

Item Type: Thesis (Doctor of Business Administration)
Uncontrolled Keywords: Artificial Intelligence, Rapid adoption of Automation, IT Consulting, Action Research, Actionable Model, Vicious Cycles
Divisions: Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Management
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 10 Sep 2021 08:45
Last Modified: 18 Jan 2023 21:32
DOI: 10.17638/03134882
Supervisors:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3134882